SECRETARY'S REPORT. 167 



Mr. Bull. — I presume a man may become intoxicated on any 

 fermented drinic, if lie desires to, and by the use of large quanti- 

 ties. When "we say that wine contains thirteen per cent, of 

 alcohol, we do not mean that it is already alcohol, but that the 

 wine yields that per cent, .when distilled. In the wine, before 

 distillation, the alcohol is in such natural combination with the 

 other constituents of the wine that it is not unwholesome ; after 

 distillation it is a poison. 



You may analyze wine and ascertain precisely the proportions 

 of its alcohol, sugar, mucilage, ether, &c., but no synthesis, 

 though the proportions be observed with the utmost accuracy, 

 will give you the wine you had before. You have broken that 

 intimate natural combination which is impossible to restore. 



You will observe I am speaking of pure wines. Much " pure 

 spirit" — medicated and deodorized alcohol — is used by makers 

 of native wine, in the belief that it is necessary, because imported 

 wines contain a certain proportion of alcohol ; but it is really 

 never necessary to add spirit to wine, which will keep perfectly 

 well if it contains a sufficient quantity of sugar, and if it does 

 not, that substance must be added. 



There is another consideration to which I wish to invite your 

 attention for a moment. In no other country in the world is there 

 so much necessity for individual culture as in this, for here 

 every man is a part of the State, and should be a pillar and 

 support to it. The State, which is only the aggregate of its 

 individual members, is weak or strong, according to the manhood 

 and ciilture of its units, and these qualities arc hardly possible 

 without a competence. This makes him really independent ; he 

 may follow his conscience, and his vote will not be influenced by 

 circumstances which too often bias the vote of the poor man. 

 How many men do we have in this pattern State of the Union, 

 the most wealthy and cultivated, in proportion to its numbers, 

 of any on the face of the earth, who are obliged to toil early 

 and late to scrape enough together to make, in their homely but 

 expressive phrase, the buckle-strap meet, and to educate their 

 children so that they may have equal chance with their fellows, 

 to rise to that higher plane to which society is steadily advanc- 

 ing ? But if these men with their narrow means succeed so 

 far as this, they have but little means or leisure for reading and 

 self-culture, both of which imply freedom from penury and 



